Ah, Magic Music..the legacy of Julian Breen (R.I.P.) I loved it. My old friend Bob Leonard was one of the original jocks there. The Jam jingles were terrific, designed to mimic certains groups and artists played in the format.
The music was matched flow, the commercial sets short and well placed and spaced. Jocks were required to start commericals at a level about 6 or 7 dB down and then pull up to full so as to not jar listeners. Julien was said to be a real task master, but Magic was a warm, elegant ac with a plan.
I also fondly remember Popular 102,later, Alex DeMers wonderful WIOQ and the Jim Nettleton programmed WUSL as U.S.1 which was a little more MORish than Magic as I recall.
WIP was the blue print for personality MOR, a la sister WNEW. Dean Tyler was the PD behind it.
WPEN's first try at oldies under PD Peter Mokover and Julian Breen was great fun to listen to with Loren Owens in the morning and Bobby "Dashboard" Dark in PM drive. Again, wonderful jingles by Jam and super audio processing. Every channel on the McCurdy board had some level of compression using what was called "gain brain" circuitry.
I remember talking with Julian years ago and asked him what he though was the failure of WPEN.... In typical Breen fashion he said to me something like, "Well, the move to fm by listeners didn't help us. I researched the XXXX out of it and it went on it's XXX anyway."
I have to agree with pretty much everything you've said, but, in all candor, the music on the original WMGK was horrendous. Julien wanted to program the station as if it were his personal jukebox. Consequently, we had an oversaturation of the likes of Buffy St. Marie, Gordon Lightfoot and Ian and Sylvia. Julien liked them. I haven't been able to listen to Gordon Lightfoot since. I have to say, though, that in my 40+ years career, my years in Philadelphia were, by far, the most fun, the most creative and spent with the best people in the business. I will never forget the after morning show breakfasts with Don Cannon, Byron (of Byron and Tanaka), Geoff Fox and me. I still have a pisture of me and Loren Owens walking down the 3rd base line at Vetran's Stadium and a shot of a charity basketball game with Anita at the Spectrum. What great years in Philly radio.
